Zugzwang-til the end of the world
by MurielLeeJones
Summary: Zugzwang was such a depressing episode, but here is my Hotch/Reid take on it. Spoilers for Zugzwang. Oh, now I need to add a warning for psychosis, and with where this is going I'm rating it M, jic, you never know what these two could get up to. So ch 4 is apparently the last, I may come back and add more, I did that with Jinxed. Major Character Death. Implied Jack/Henry
1. Till the end of the world

Spencer needs me. After all this time. Spencer needs me. I was still the person he called first.

There was a tone to his voice that I had only heard once before, when we lost Emily. When he thought we lost Emily, when I allowed him to think we lost Emily. Please god, let him not be using again, let his mother be alright, let him be safe, let me help him.

And when I saw him I was sorry that I had felt even a small moment of victory for being the person he called first. I wish he hadn't needed to make that call.

_I hated having to call Aaron. I hated that he was, after Mauve, still the person I trusted most in this world. I hated, that after all this time, I still relied on him. But I was desperate, more desperate than when we lost Emily, more desperate than when I was an active addict, because this was more important (sorry Emily) this was Mauve, and there was still hope we could find her alive, not much hope, I knew that, I knew I sounded desperate. _

I closed the door behind us as we walked into the office. Different, far different, circumstances than the last time I had done that.

"_Ten months ago," _

I should have been registering more of the content, all I heard was that for ten months Spencer had been seeing someone (if that's what one would call it), seeing someone else. I knew I shouldn't be jealous, I was with Beth, I had moved on, but I was. I don't think he knew, I don't think he even really knew I was there. All he could think about was finding Maeve.

I know the horror of the anticipation of the death of someone you love. The anticipation, of the violent death of someone you love. Spencer, I had nearly lost Spencer to Tobias Hankle, and that victory would always be bitter; and Haley, dear god, please let Spencer never know that loss. Only my respect for him kept me from wrapping my arms around him. He had moved on from me, he come to me for help, actual physical help, not comfort.

Then my mind came back, and I began realizing the extent of Spencer's problem, he had never seen her; and I couldn't imagine loosing Spencer or Haley either before I had held them to myself, before I had the opportunity to love them fully. Please do not let him know that loss.

"_Please help me." I heard my own voice. I was humiliated that I should have failed so fully in protecting Mauve, just as I had failed to protect Aaron. I should have been at his apartment, instead he spent a night in hell, but he lived, please let her live, no matter what else, let Mauve live. My thoughts so scattered, splintering apart, her voice, her letters, hours of correspondence, of thought put into letters, of her hiding, and my worrying, and my being weak, and not insisting on finding her stalker, and now she was in danger, if she was even alive. Now, at the last moment, I had to be strong._

Spencer shouldn't be alone. His head isn't clear, even he said so. He can have poor judgment when he is stressed; I had let my mind wander back to Texas. So I take him with me. I can have him listen, bring to bear his knowledge of Mauve, any clue that can be triggered, anything to shake loose the knowledge in that precise mind—now so shaken. And I know when her parents say "Fiancé" that something slips from under him, he no longer understands, but he still loves.

_Dumbest smart person ever. And Aaron is trying to protect me. Or is he trying to protect Mauve? Or is he trying to protect Mauve from my incompetence? I know there is never any detail too small. Why am I still hiding this from him? I feel his hands on me, and I see the empathy in his eyes, and I know that he is also too close to this. I want to beg him, to let him take care of all my problems because I can't protect her, I will let him handle it._

I should never have brought him with, but I couldn't leave him alone. He is so hurt and so confused that she hadn't mentioned her fiancé to him, maybe he had mentioned us. Why should that matter? How much didn't he know? And the look on his face when he recognized that man, her fiancé.

_And Morgan asks me the question and I tell him what I didn't tell her, I tell him what I didn't tell Aaron. I tell him I love Mauve._

I was surprised at his reaction to the idea she might have had a lesbian lover, had he told her about us? And then he picked Blake. I had never told him I was happy when he picked me, when Tobias forced him, and he picked me, because I knew he trusted me with his life. I hope he is right to trust me with Maeve's life. I didn't save Haley. He saved Leela, I didn't save Haley.

_I wish I could throw myself on his mercy and beg him. I nearly begged him, for what? To do what he couldn't do for Haley? So I don't choose him, I choose Blake. I don't choose him I choose Blake because I can't bear to hurt him by telling him. Why would I ever have thought that I would have hurt him? He walked away from me when he chose Beth. Maybe that's for the best, because now we are here to save Maeve. _

And then he holds up that note, "Me for her." And my world is going to end. And when he says he will go in, because, and he is right, that is the only way to save her, my world is going to end. And when I tell him that he will die if he does, and when he doesn't pause, my world is going to end. But I won't stop him. He deserves the opportunity I never had with Haley. He deserves the victory I had with him. I can't take this opportunity to save Mauve from him, and my world ends.

_I know that look on Aaron's face. I know every look on Aaron's face. He is going to go against his better judgment. And there is another look, the look he has when his world ends. And I shake myself free of it, because the only reason he and I are even here together is save Mauve, and without her, without saving her, my world does end._

And then he explains it all logically, but what it comes down to is that he has set aside what he feels and used this true gift, his intellect to save Mauve.

_And now Aaron does what he does best. He steps forward, and helps me, and makes it happen. And in what might be the last moment we have to say goodbye I feel his hand on me. "Reid." He says my name, and I can't think about him now._

It is a mistake on my part. This is the moment when we say goodbye, one way or another Spencer and I are done. So I call out to him, "Reid." I hear myself it sounds so desperate. And I reach out, I don't know why, but as I pull back my hand I know I have let him go, have to let him go to Mauve. I wish it was me walking through that door. I doubt whether he knows it.

I'm the first through the door when we hear that shot.

_And then Mauve is lying on the floor._

And I see her lying on the floor, and I see Spencer, so hurt. And I don't go to him, this time I don't go to him.


	2. Preparing the Dead

It had happed after Haley was gone; and they tried to say it didn't mean anything, because it didn't mean anything either of them could express. So Hotch paused, for a brief moment, before he knocked on Reid's door, before he ignored the silence from indoors, and before he used his key to open the door to Reid's apartment.

I paused as I opened the door to Reid's trashed apartment, with Reid as disheveled as his surrounds. For a moment I was worried, worried enough that I stopped. My salvation had been Jack, could Reid's be dilaudid? Then I proceeded because I had to believe that Reid needed what he had given to me, I proceeded across the room and backed Reid up towards his bedroom—as much of his bedroom as could be seen under his books. I pushed Reid, unresisting, gently back on his bed, removed his shoes, he wouldn't be needing those, and set a pillow under his head, he could rest. I gathered up the scattered books and stacked then neatly, in order, on the floor beside his bed. Reid waited silently for me. He must have known what was coming; I could only guess that his silence was consent; as Reid had guessed when he did me this kindness.

_Aaron set down what appeared to be his go bag on the floor, he opened it, from it he removed a small bowl and a couple of clean towels, a few small glass jars of what I guessed, correctly, to be oil. His hands moving me, his hands taking my shoes, why was I wearing shoes? I wasn't going anywhere. He lay my head upon a pillow and let me rest. He set my books aside. He removed the last book from my unresisting hands, and set it not on a stack, but on the bed beside me. It all seemed so far away. He left me, quietly, found his way to my kitchenette, and ran warm water. He was still enough that I knew he wasn't disturbing anything. It would all be found how I had left it._

When I returned Reid's eyes were half closed, other than that he was just as I had left him resting. I set the bowl filled with warm water down on a stand beside his bed. I gently damped a small towel, added some oil to the moisture and brought his eyelids down for a moment. Taking another rag, just as he had done, I cleaned out his mouth, first gently opening jaw, and then my task done, pushing it shut again. I cleaned his ears, taking another rag, then his face, another oil, the same smell I remembered from when had had handled me so gently. I stroked his hair back from his face, and then recalling how he liked it falling forward I brought a strand over his forehead.

_I had tried not to anticipate his return. Somehow in the safety of his presence I could find some rest, and found my eyes slightly closing, drooping down as I heard him busy in the kitchen. He did return though. I heard him prepare what he needed, warm water, oils, cloth. Then I felt his touch. It didn't surprise me, what did take me aback was how gentle he was, I don't know why I was surprised, he had always been gentle with me. I suppose I was gentle with him as I did this to his body, all I can remember clearly are the scents, and his presence, masked by my tears. I am sure he is crying, if I were to look at him I would know. But I prefer the rest. I have cried more than enough tears—they haven't absolved me of Maeve's death, I do not expect them to, there is no forgiveness grief._

His face his ears, his eyes, his mouth cleaned, I use a purple scarf, his purple scarf, that I had recalled as being kept beside his bed, to gently keep his jaw in place, not as tight as one might need. I don't want to frighten him. Fear is so close to him at this time as to be a friend.

_I wonder if he felt this terror at his binding. My silence is suddenly compulsory, but I resist any impulse to break from my quiet stasis. I know that cloth and I think it is appropriate, but I have no way of telling him, so I relax into what I can longer find any way to resist. I wonder if Mauve felt terror in her enforced silence, but I cannot cry out for her again._

_Aaron's touch is tender, perhaps like a lover, not the lover he was, he was gentle, but not this steady. I wonder if this is the feel of my hands on his body, of his hands on Haley's body, my hands on Mauve, I cannot explain the reality of her presence to anyone. For a moment I will maybe be allowed to visit her world._

I begin to take off his clothes, and he softens into my touch. I had not expected his body to soften so soon. The dressing gown is easy to remove with a minimum of resistance from his weight. Was he always this light? I couldn't have been this light for him to move. I slide in behind him to support his full weight as he had done with me, head now lifted from his pillow and resting on my chest. I can smell his hair. It needs to be washed, should I wash it? He didn't wash mine, nor did he shave my face, leaving evidence of time passed. I remove the shirt of pajamas, the same one I remember; he ought to have replaced them. Then I lay his body and move to take his pants, this, I imagine will the last time he is undressed by me, and I pause, because he should have undressed her on their wedding night.

_It is familiar being undressed by Aaron, but the circumstances so changed. He is methodical, repeating the pattern he knows from only one encounter. My eyes closed I smell his presence, and hers, Mauve's, which still has a tinge of terror to it. I wonder if he can clean that away. He breathes in my scents as he erases them with the oils. I am naked for both him and her. And I wish for Mauve's hands over my body._

I wonder if that is her I feel behind me, curious, not demanding, gentle, or is that Haley? Would she come to visit Reid? The scent of the oils only serves to remind me of her, the scent of Haley and Spencer mixed together in the smell of Myrrh. The presence of Mauve absorbs the smell. I place a towel underneath him and gently press on his bladder, removed the soiled cloth and dispose of it in his restroom and return to begin the project of cleansing Reid.

_Aaron's hand on my bladder strips away another measure of my control. He removes the cloth and leaves me temporarily exposed, prostate, silenced, powerless. I don't fight it, he didn't fight it. I underestimated how brave Aaron Hotchner is, not just in willingly subjecting himself to this unknown, but in knowingly returning it to me. He begins to clean my body._

With each touch there are reminders, details of his life, the scarring on his feet because he knew this crooks of his elbows were too obvious, the knot of tissue on his knee that he told me wasn't that bad, the rub marks never quite gone from his wrists where Tobias bound him, the still open flesh on his arm, the gun callouses on his hands from practicing, and from killing. Spencer Reid is a good man, he is also a killer. I believe that is in his mind right now. Every touch bringing a memory with, and I only able to find a few. Every place on my body that Haley had touched held memories, does his body miss the touch Mauve was never allowed to give him?

_I wish it were her hands preparing me. It would seem cruel to watch her suffer as I do, as Aaron suffered. Me for her. I search for Mauve's presence in Aaron's touch. _

_Aaron turns my body over, cleaning my back as well as my front, calloused hands washing me; hands that know more about me than Mauve ever did. I don't resent him, I miss Mauve. His hands touch me intimately in a way that I should have missed. Pushing the cotton plug to seal my anus he is more familiar than we ever were in life. It is the strangest moments when we realize we are loved. Still it is a place his hands no longer belong._

I feel as though I am trespassing as I map his body, this is Mauve's. I had never felt more like I belonged to Haley than after she had died.

_He finishes his work. I am bare and glistening with oil, but all he regards me with is sympathy. If he follows my pattern, and I believe from his breathing he does, he is no longer crying. I can feel his eyes on me, I have always been able to feel his eyes on me. The last, one of the only moments, I had with Mauve I could feel her stare, I feel her presence now._

_Then he deviates from my script. Instead of dressing me, which was heavy and clumsy, he lays a cloth over my groin, and then rolls me gently onto a sheet, he brings my hands over my chest and crosses them, that I did for him also, and then he shrouds me in a bed sheet, wrapping me from shoulder to toe. He replaces the pillow beneath my head, smooths my hair once more. He closes my eyes fully again. _

I wrap him in a shroud, Reid never looked right in the clothes of the everyday world, lovely, but not right. In a sheet he looks contained in a way that he never has been in this life, and soothed, swaddled like a baby. Laid out like this he is for a moment at rest. I lay a hand on his forehead and kiss him gently on his part closed lips. "Come back when you are ready."

_I hear him say exactly what I had said to him as he lay this unmoving. And I want to ask how that will take, but I have no will with which to move myself._

I place his book from Mauve on his chest and leave.

Authors note: Thank you wonderful readers! This chapter was awkward to write, and because I wanted to get it out before the new episode (is it a new episode?) on Wed, I haven't tweaked it as much as I usually would. This was originally a standalone, a little different, and maybe more powerful.


	3. Ferryman

Trigger warnings: psychosis

I let myself in—it is a habit. I don't know if he agrees to it or not. I've never asked him. He does however submit. I wouldn't force myself on him in any way. Everything is neat, cleaned up, filed, books where they belong, dishes done, mirrors uncovered, as it should be. But he is still chasing her.

_I don't look up. I know he is here. I haven't said it, but I expect him, and I wouldn't do this without him. I'm ready, ready to go looking. Perhaps Haley is heaven; perhaps she is watching over Jack, maybe there is some easy path for those who did their suffering here. But I am chasing Mauve._

We don't talk. He doesn't talk much anymore. I became quiet in grief also. Less than a month and he has not begun to move on, he has simply moved deeper. He is more lost than I have seen him before, and I help him, for what it is worth.

_He slides in behind me. So easy, is that his place now? He holds me up, in his arms. I can feel the five-o'clock shadow on his face. Not like Rossi or Morgan, just like him. I wonder what it would have been like with his full beard, but only for a moment. He is not here for that. At first he was here to bring me back from the darkness that was becoming my friend, now he helps me look for her. I cannot allow her to be gone._

The first time I saw him with the vials and the needle and the latex strap I asked him to give them to me. I broke our rule, I spoke. Maybe that was when we made that rule. We don't talk to each other, maybe it is part of the silence of his grief. I've always struggled to talk. Silence is comfortable for me.

_After that first time Hotch has never asked me to hand it over. He holds my arm for me, he tightens the tourniquet if I need it, I imagine he would find the vain if I asked. We will probably find out. I feel afraid, because I know I will go over and over again._

I know how to find the vain and tonight I take the needle from him. It was drawn up and his hands were shaking. I rationalize that I don't want him to hurt himself, he gets panicky when he can't find the vein. I can tell on a case when he needs more. He did this time. I don't enjoy doing this. I don't find any power in it. Just sadness. I am helping him find her, even if it destroys him. I wish I could say no to him, I've never been able to.

_Then I slip into the velvet. For a moment there is fear, it is just the rhythms of my body changing to accommodate the drug. It does matter. I know she is here. The place where she belongs in me, my life, my body, is empty—I wonder about accepting her into my body, and how that would work. I let my weight sink back into him. I am careful not to speak; I don't want to frighten him. There is a city, and I know this place, the map is clear, and I know that if I walk to each room, and I pause, because I don't have a gun, and I look for it, but it doesn't matter, because I think I see her. I I call lout for her, and he closes his arms around me. There is still part of him holding onto me. And it is all that holds me, I don't shake him loose. I walk, each place has lights, they are older, art deco, with courtyards, I didn't know she had been to vegas, I try to remind myself that his isn't really her, this is my mind, but I can see her, and she is walking ahead of me, I can smell her, the combination of books, and clean labs, and violets, and terror. The terror is catching; I must make a noise, because his hands grip me tight. I start to run along the brick alleys, and she is gone, but when I ask she was just here. And I am surprised that I know all these people. I see Tobias, but he doesn't recognize me, am I that changed? Every time I see him and he doesn't see me, and I can see her and I wonder if she is running away from me, and I am so tired and I am falling._

He is crying out, and I resist the temptation to wake him. He is too far gone, it will only disturb him, I could do with him as I pleased, as I please. I run my hand over his hair. The time for crying is done, and it isn't mine to kiss him, so I stroke his hair off his forehead, and promise him that she is waiting for him. And I wonder if this is what she wants for him, I would think not, I wonder if it is what I want for him, I won't explore that answer. I should tell someone, at the least I should tell Rossi. I truth I should tell Strauss, but I look away. Would I confess my complicity?

_My feet are wet, I am wet, but it feels right, like the thickness has transposed itself onto me, I pause, I have always paused in the final moment, I pause when it counts, when I should have told her I love her, so I call that out, but she walks into what I know is her house, and I follow her, and the wide, big windows set in the old adobe walls, and wide veranda, and the slate and wood floors on the first floor remind me of something, and I can't place it, but there is a taste of it in my mouth where my tongue is thick and as I start to call out to her again I can't, and I can't cry and I can't breathe, and there is a downstairs, a basement, did I know about that before, this is where she lives now there are books everywhere, I would pause to read them but my heart is beating too fast for me to stop and she walks in, I see her walk into a black dark basement and I don't pause because every time I have paused I have lost her and I can no longer breathe and I no longer care about the pain did I know my body hurt like his it feels good I want to know about that and the blackness looks solid and she is gone and there is no light like a black hole wants her but it looks to be a dining room I know that in the dark and I cannot leave and I follow her_

He calls out, loudly, I think he is calling for her; and the he mutters, and I believe he is trying to shout it to her, "I love you." And for a moment, as I watch his face in concern, I realize I wish that was for me. He needn't know that. He is too restless, he is afraid, and perhaps this once I should try and wake him; so I shake his shoulder, and his powerful hands grip me, and he sits up and I can't read the look on his face.

_I look straight at my reflection in the window pane, and I realize it is me, reflected in the glass black against the night, and I look back down on myself held in Aaron's arms grasping him in unspeakable horror, that word isn't enough, fear? Dismay? Revulsion, no, not that? Maybe I have been silent too long and maybe it is the drug. And I watch from the window and then I leave._

I see him looking at his reflection and suddenly I am taken up in his horror, and my brows crease, and I shake him, hard, and I call his name. I call him Spencer, and that isn't our habit anymore, but in that moment I want all of him, I need to call him back before he goes. And then he is begging me to take him.

_Author's note: Well yes, idk if Spencer is out of character or not, I'm not sure if I'm writing about addiction, grief or schizophrenia or some horrid perfect storm. I expected this to take more out of me to write, I will revise it if I ever find the words for that blessed darkness. Oh my darling Muse—I got a real person, honest—just pointed out to me that I am holding back in all my tumblr blog things also._


	4. Calling the beloved dead

"Where ever you go, I will go, and where ever you stay I will stay."—from memory, book of Ruth.

The hospital had called me. He was staring off into space. No one had said, "Say your goodbyes," or "This is it." but between the call and hush around the room I knew there wasn't much longer. I had become used to him around the house, Jack and I had. Even now though, after years of living together, he hesitates as I take his hand. "Dad?" I say, not wanting to raise my voice, he hates that, though his hearing has been poor since the bomb. I had heard about that from Mom I heard about things from Mom that I wished I had heard from Dad, but he wouldn't talk; and it was a kindness on her part, even as she worried she was breaking his trust, it was a kindness for myself and Jack.

He had felt he was imposing on us. He wasn't, we could insist on it, but he would still feel that way. I had initially pointed out that we would be happy to have Mom and Daddy stay if that was what they choose, and then stopped short of saying, "but they have each other." The look on Dad's face said it, "they have each other." He would never say, "I have no one." At first I thought it was Haley, Jack's Mom, then wondered if it was Beth, I had known her for all intents and purposes as Jack's Mom, when I heard about Kate—Mom had implied that she might have been the one; to the end I remained unsure as to who wasn't there.

When people are dying, and I have seen more than my share, as had Jack, when people are dying they often see loved ones. And now he looks past me, and wonder who he is seeing, Haley, Beth, Kate Joyner, Dave—he was close to David Rossi, but I can't hear what he is saying. The more his deafness progressed, the more quietly he spoke, and now he is nearly silent as his lips move. It is too close to a prayer to be ignore, and although he was never a religious man I have prayed for him, and I do it again, the simplest of prayers, "Our Father," I begin, and know he will follow the rest from years of experience, a muscle memory of the chants of childhood.

"As I lay me down," I whisper under my breath as we finish praying. He is struggling with his body, he is trying to escape. I can see, feel, the twitching in his hands that has beset him more frequently, and he reaches for an elbow, and tries to scratch. I lead his hand back to where It was before. I wish Jack was here. I feel inadequate in watching Dad die. He grips onto my hand, I think it his last grasp at this world. I think I hear his words and I listen carefully, but can't catch it, I don't know who he is calling, though I am calling out to Jack myself. Maybe he is calling Jack along with me, but I wouldn't know that, he doesn't know that.

I wish I could say Aaron Hotchner's only vice was drinking. Jack told me Dad has left the BAU, retired, due to his loss of hearing, it must have been getting worse, even then, but it was years past the bombing. He told me Dad had started drinking after he left the BAU, and then he told me the story that truly frightened me, because in it Special Agent Aaron Hotchner, that is how I thought of him as a child, Special Agent Aaron Hotchner, was broken. It was terrifying for Jack, he only told me years into our relationship, just before Dad moved in with us, as though he wanted me know why Dad had his weaknesses. He told me how Dad had come home with Dave, broken and crying, sobbing, and saying he had failed, and then the thing that puzzled Jack, "He shouldn't be gone." Jack associated it with his retiring.

I am, was, younger than Jack, but I went to the funeral, and I remember him clearly. I remember Halloween and Mom and Daddy, at their wedding, and I remember him at dinners, and could nearly claim to remember him holding me as a baby. I went to the funeral, I don't know why, I was probably too young, but, as Jack and I now know, parenting is too hard to be done right. At the funeral I remember Agent Hotchner and I remember him leaving, and then Jack remembers the rest of the story.

It is hard to stay when someone you love is dying.

**Calling of the beloved dead**

don't close the circle cast

each time it is the last

uncover the mirrors

don't spill the salt

-sacred heart of Christ—

**Dear Readers:-** Thank you for reading thus far, to the end as it were. A, as always, thank you.

–always in love- M


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